From: Marshall Brain II mdbrain@ncsu.eduDate: Wed, Nov 20, 2024 at 4:33 AMSubject: I want to help you understandTo: Marshall Brain II mdbrain@ncsu.edu

Hello,

If you are receiving this email, you are a friend and colleague of mine. Today I would like to ask for a few minutes of your time so that I can tell you a story.

My manager announced my retirement from the university on November 6, sending this email to the people in NC State’s I&E unit:

---------- Begin Markham message ---------From: Stephen Markham skmarkha@ncsu.eduDate: Wed, Nov 6, 2024 at 3:24 PMSubject: Marshall's RetirementTo: Haley Huie hehuie@ncsu.edu, Josh Guter jsguter@ncsu.edu, Lisa Chang lichang@ncsu.edu, Spencer Miller skmille9@ncsu.edu, Jennifer Capps <jennifer\_capps@ncsu.edu>, Erica Wisecup ercahoon@ncsu.edu, Kenneth Proseus kpproseu@ncsu.edu, Ahmed Ali aali4@ncsu.edu, Abby Phillips adphill3@ncsu.edu, Eren Hebert ebhebert@ncsu.edu, Alisha Brice ambrice@ncsu.edu, Priya Gill pgill2@ncsu.edu, Jeffrey Pollack jmpolla3@ncsu.edu, Steve Barr shbarr@ncsu.edu, Rob Dunn rrdunn@ncsu.eduCc: Marshall Brain II mdbrain@ncsu.edu

Dear Colleagues,

I accepted Marshall's letter of retirement that will be effective December 31, 2025.  He will continue his courses and assignments to the end of the year and then consult with me on a transition through Spring Break 2025.  

Marshall has been at NC State for 12 years.  During that time he taught in the Engineering Entrepreneurship Program and served on the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Leadership Team.  Marshall has been a close colleague of mine and helped me through my transition into the I&E program.  In particular, Marshall served on the I&E Strategy Committee that helped set the direction for our group.  Few people volunteer as much time and energy as Marshall.  His keen insights and fun approach to entrepreneurship will be sorely missed.  

Sincerely, 

Steve Markham

 

Stephen K. Markham, PhD

Goodnight Distinguished University Professor and Executive Director

NC State Innovation and Entrepreneurship

entrepreneurship.ncsu.edu

---------- End Markham message ---------

The next day I tried to play along. I wrote back to everyone in I&E with this reply:

 

---------- Begin gratitude message ---------From: Marshall Brain II mdbrain@ncsu.eduDate: Thu, Nov 7, 2024 at 7:07 AMSubject: Re: Marshall's Retirement - a note of gratitude

All,

 

You are my colleagues, and in many cases my dear friends. All of you know that I love my job, and I love the EEP, and I love being a part of NC State. There is also a larger context. It involves how deeply committed I have become to NC State over the course of my life. I first attended NC State in 1978 for a six-week summer program. That was 46 years ago. Most recently, I have been working for the past 12 years on the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program. Along the way I have been a member of the Academy of Outstanding Teachers, a Distinguished Alumni, a member of the Computer Science Hall of Fame, an Entrepreneur of the Year, and so on, and most importantly a member of I&E. The College of Sciences used me as a keynote speaker this year, I speak all over campus, and these events can be so much fun because I meet lots of new people. A good portion of my life and my thinking has been spent at NC State. You cannot imagine how attached and dedicated I am to the people who make up this institution, to the students here, and to the place itself. NC State is a gigantic part of my life and my being.

I see many of you every week in one capacity or another, and we have been seeing each other this way over the course of many years. These can be extremely deep and meaningful relationships that develop from hundreds, sometime thousands of interactions together. The fact that I have so many of these close relationships with so many people at NC State is something I cherish. And what we do here is important: We are trying to make life better for students and for each other in collaborative and cooperative ways. I believe that we often change people’s lives for the better. 

We help each other, do favors for each other, uplift each other, and pick each other up when we fall down. We work with each other in good faith, sometimes loving faith. One characteristic I notice is that we are often laughing together. There is joy in working with, interacting with, and collaborating with so many wonderful people on a daily basis. I love coming to work every day.

How did our relationships with each other start? I thought it would be a fun experiment to look back and see what our first emails together looked like. I’m going to do this in the order found in the list of people on Steve's email…

[It’s a long email that goes on for many pages]

---------- End gratitude message --------- 

Everything I have said here is true, and everyone knows it. I do love my job and the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program. I do love the institution of NC State, its people and its students. I do love my colleagues and friends.

But what Dr. Markham said on November 6 is not true. I am not “retiring”. Many people can see through that. After they see or hear about me retiring, they will say things like (paraphrasing), “OK, you are not retiring. You love your job, you love the university, you have never mentioned one thing about retiring prior to this, so what gives?”

“What gives?” is a good question, and here is the answer. I have just been through one of the most demoralizing, depressing, humiliating, unjust processes possible with the university. The fact is that I am not “retiring”. Instead, NC State terminated me on October 29. In doing that, my manager gave me three choices:

“You have three options: 1) Retirement, 2) Discontinuation, or 3) Separation.   By continuing to argue I will take the path of "Discontinuation."  "Discontinuation" means we will not renew your contract.  By the end of business on Wednesday I will notify the university and the I&E team that the end of the semester is your last day.  Everything ends at the end of the semester.  To retire and to avoid "Discontinuation" you must send me your letter of resignation before the end of business Wednesday.  If you prolong your argument I will make the "Separation" effective Wednesday, your email will be cut off, your office will be inaccessible, you will not finish the courses this semester.  Everything ends Wednesday.  To avoid an immediate separation you must not engage in the argument.  If we agree to an amicable separation and you begin to argue later it will trigger an immediate separation.”

What got us to this point? The short answer is that I witnessed wrongdoing on campus, and I tried to report it in this context:

          NC State has systems at https://compliance.ncsu.edu/ for reporting any wrongdoing that occurs on campus.

          One of these systems, called EthicsPoint, asks employees to submit reports of wrongdoing.

          EthicsPoint promises that there will be no retaliation for reporting concerns.

          However, it turns out that this system is completely fraudulent.

          Therefore, when I witnessed wrongdoing by two department heads at NC State and I reported their wrongdoing, the university decided to retaliate in the strongest manner possible, and it terminated me. Instead of a strict prohibition on retaliation, the university went all in on retaliation toward me.

Here is what the EthicsPoint page says:

https://secure.ethicspoint.com/domain/media/en/gui/49688/index.html

“No Retaliation

NC State is committed to protecting individuals who report concerns. Reporting suspected violations of laws, policies, regulations, or rules is a protected activity. Any adverse action (including intimidation, threats, or coercion) taken against an individual because the individual reported a concern constitutes retaliation and is strictly prohibited.

NC State's Commitment to Compliance

NC State is committed to maintaining a culture of compliance and an environment where open, honest communications are the expectation, not the exception. NC State wants all members of the University community, regardless of their position, to feel comfortable in approaching a supervisor or manager with their concerns. In addition, NC State's Policies, Regulations, and Rules provide guidance and standard practices for conducting the university’s activities with honesty and integrity.”

Public statements about “Compliance and Integrity” made by North Carolina State University include:

·         Quote 1: The university wants employees to report wrongdoing and concerns. On https://secure.ethicspoint.com/domain/media/en/gui/49688/index.html it states: “NC State is committed to maintaining a culture of compliance and an environment where open, honest communications are the expectation, not the exception. NC State wants all members of the University community, regardless of their position, to feel comfortable in approaching a supervisor or manager with their concerns.”

·         Quote 2: It is every employee’s duty to report wrongdoing. On https://compliance.ncsu.edu/ it states: “It is everyone’s responsibility to bolster the stature of NC State as a university of ethical excellence and to report wrongdoing.”

·         Quote 3: The university defines wrongdoing in this way on https://compliance.ncsu.edu/ : "Compliance is acting in a way with the greatest honesty and integrity. It’s following the laws and the policies of the university and the State. But above all, it's really behaving with the highest ethics and the highest standards." -- Chancellor Randy Woodson.

·         Quote 4: The university states that when an employee reports wrongdoing and concerns, the employee is protected from retaliation. On https://secure.ethicspoint.com/domain/media/en/gui/49688/index.html it states: “Any adverse action (including intimidation, threats, or coercion) taken against an individual because the individual reported a concern constitutes retaliation and is strictly prohibited.”

·         Quote 5: The university wants employees to report other employees who try to stop the reporting of concerns and wrongdoing. On the EthicsPoint intake form it states: “Please identify any persons who have attempted to conceal this problem and the steps they took to conceal it.”

This seems straightforward. I am supposed to “feel comfortable in approaching a supervisor or manager with my concerns.” The university is specifically concerned about honesty, integrity, and the highest ethical standards. NCSU has also created the whole EthicsPoint intake system so that employees can formally report concerns when those standards are being broken. And then in return for the reporting, any retaliation is strictly prohibited. This is the promise that EthicsPoint makes.

The problem is that none of this is true. The system is fraudulent and the promise is a lie. We can see this through my experiences over the last several months.

My story begins in July. Here is how it got started, with an email from my department head in ECE:

---------- Begin Misra message ---------From: Veena Misra vmisra@ncsu.eduDate: Mon, Jul 15, 2024 at 11:49 AMSubject: ECE Space Needs in EB2To: Marshall Brain II mdbrain@ncsu.eduCc: Dan Green <dan\_green@ncsu.edu>

Dear Marshall,

I want to discuss an urgent space need with you for ECE which is very time sensitive. 

The Goodnight Chair of Quantum Computing is arriving in August. We are in desperate need of an office for him and there is no other room in EB2. And with expansion this situation will get even more difficult. 

So given this scenario, we want to place this new faculty member in the EEP meeting room since we have no other options at this time.  I am happy to meet you and discuss how we can implement this and what difficulties this might create. 

Thanks,

Best,

Veena

--

Veena Misra, Ph.D., IEEE Fellow

Department Head, Electrical and Computer Engineering

M.C. Dean Distinguished University Professor

Co-Director, NSF ASSIST Nanosystems Center

North Carolina State UniversityRaleigh, NC, 27695

www.ece.ncsu.edu

assist.ncsu.edu

Tel: 919 515 7356

---------- End Misra message ---------

From an “honesty and integrity” perspective, this email has multiple problems. The most obvious one is that the first sentence is creating an “artificial crisis” or a “manufactured crisis”. This is a classic bad faith negotiating tactic. The email also demonstrates incompetence, since the department has been working to hire this Goodnight Chair of Quantum Computing for more than two years and therefore had all the time necessary to carefully plan for his arrival rather than making a crisis out of it. In addition:

          There are plenty of other options.

          There is no “desperate need”.

          Like any normal person, I do not want to give up this space because it hurts my ability to do my job. Things gets worse if I give up this space, and there are many other options so I should not need to.

 

Over the course of a month there were several emails and meetings on this topic. It became obvious that this entire exercise was being done in bad faith, with multiple incidents of lying, incompetence, hypocrisy, information hiding, etc.

 

At the end of the process, there was a particularly uncomfortable moment, and therefore I decided to write up my concerns and send them to Dr. Misra as a way to document the problems leading to this moment. If you read the EthicsPoint quote above it says, “NC State wants all members of the University community, regardless of their position, to feel comfortable in approaching a supervisor or manager with their concerns.” So that is what I did. Dr. Misra is my supervisor, and I approached her by writing an email with my concerns.

 

I expected her to behave like a professional executive and fix the problems I described. I wish this was what happened.

          Dr, Misra (and an accomplice) committed wrongdoing (untrue statements, incompetence, hiding info, bad faith dealings, unethical behavior, etc.)

          I reported the wrongdoing privately to the two of them

          Dr. Misra could have looked at the reporting and fixed the problems (with or without my help).

 

They suffer no harm in doing #3. They do not lose face (only the three of us knew what happened). They receive no penalty and no punishment for the wrongdoing. They behave ethically. The result is that the department improves – everyone in the department benefits. Which is a fantastic outcome. For example, here is one of my recommendations:

 

“If this space situation was being handled with a defined process, and if the process was publicly visible, then everyone in the department would know that I would need to lose half of my space on X date to make room for Y person. There would be zero ‘urgency’ and zero ‘time sensitivity’ if there were a competent, public process in play.”

 

Instead of behaving professionally, Dr. Misra exploded in fury. What came back was a sickening nuclear bomb of retaliation the likes of which could not be believed. She ex-communicated me from my department for reporting my concerns to her.

 

I wrote all this up and sent a formal report to the EthicsPoint system because this was an obvious case of retaliation. I expected that she would be punished both for the original wrongdoing I experienced (lying, incompetence, manufacturing a crisis, hypocrisy, lack of process, etc.) and for the retaliation. This is what the EthicsPoint system promises.

 

A few weeks later I received another email from a different department head that was even worse:

 

---------- Begin Ekkad message ---------

From: Srinath Ekkad sekkad@ncsu.edu

Date: Thu, Sep 5, 2024 at 3:53 PM

Subject: ME students in EEP

To: Marshall Brain II mdbrain@ncsu.edu, Stephen Markham skmarkha@ncsu.edu

Cc: Jim Pfaendtner pfaendtner@ncsu.edu, Jerome Lavelle jplavell@ncsu.edu, Cheryl Tran chtran@ncsu.edu, Tarek Echekki techekk@ncsu.edu

 

Hi Marshall:

 

We have been mulling our curriculum and its impact on our MAE students for the past year or so, especially after the 2022 ABET review. After several discussions within and also talking to many of our students, we have come to the conclusion that the EEP program is not working well with our planned learning outcomes for ABET for senior design. We were lucky last time when the evaluators glossed over our EEP side of senior design because of the small number of students taking the 482/483. However, to maintain consistency and to also avoid confusions regarding expectations, we will not be recommending ME students to take EEP under the 482/483 class.  MAE students will not pursue EEP starting Fall 2025.

 

We have been working with other engineering departments in the college to create interdisciplinary industry funded senior design projects which are more in line with our expectations for our students and in line with our ABET outcomes. This email is a courtesy from me to inform you of this decision by my MAE team. Thank you for your time and consideration. We wish you and your EEP team the best.

 

Best regards

Srinath

 

Srinath V. Ekkad, PhD

Department Head and RJ Reynolds Professor

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering

&

Special Advisor to Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation

North Carolina State University

Raleigh NC 27695-7910

Phone: (919) 515-2368

Email: sekkad@ncsu.edu

Fellow, ASME

Fellow, Royal Aeronautical Society

Fellow, AIAA

Member: Chancellors Task Force on Corporate Relations

---------- End Ekkad message ---------

 

This email contains wrongdoing on several levels, with the first level being that I never should have received this email. What should have happened instead was, a year prior, I should have received an email inviting me and/or Dr. Seth Hollar into the “mulling our curriculum” process. Dr. Hollar is a faculty member in the MAE department in charge of a senior design class that has been going on for 30 years. Dr. Hollar has worked with the MAE department’s blessings and encouragement for 14 years as part of the EEP. Therefore, it is completely obvious to include Dr. Hollar in the year-long process. The second level is that this email defames Dr. Hollar and me in front of the Dean for something that is instead representative of Dr. Ekkad’s incompetence.

 

Therefore, I wrote a reply to Dr. Ekkad expressing my concerns, just like the university tells me to do. In my reply I included a screen shot of https://compliance.ncsu.edu/ so that it would be obvious that I am writing to him under the compliance and EthicsPoint framework.

 

On the same day that I sent my concerns to him, Dr. Ekkad began retaliating. Even worse, he began enlisting the help of others to retaliate, all the way up to the Provost’s office. Therefore, a week later I received an email from my manager that stated:

 

“Marshall - my colleague, my confidant, my advisor, my friend - you are over the line.  While I have tremendous respect for you - you are far over the line of acceptable behavior and you do not acknowledge your destructive behavior.  You are not the lone crusader standing up for a righteous cause - you are tearing yourself, and the program down.  I anticipate that you may disagree with this and that is your prerogative, but I must now respond to your repeated, unacceptable behavior.  To be clear I am pursuing disciplinary action.  I wish with all my heart this was different.”

 

This statement by Dr. Markham is bizarre when contrasted with the statements that EthicsPoint makes. My behavior is totally acceptable (see Quote 1) and in fact is demanded by the university (see Quote 2). In addition, retaliating against my behavior is strictly prohibited (see Quote 4), and disciplinary action for my reporting is clearly retaliation.

 

Unfortunately, the EthicsPoint system is fraudulent. It turns out that EthicsPoint does not care about “honesty and integrity” or reported concerns. It does not care about wrongdoing and does not prosecute wrongdoing. In addition, when employees report wrongdoing, as I did 8 times, they are wide open to retaliation and will be terminated.

 

The power structure I have witnessed at NCSU is this: department heads who commit wrongdoing cannot be approached at all. They do not behave like professional executives, but instead like fragile children. If approached with reports of their wrongdoing, NCSU department heads respond with tantrums and retaliation rather than addressing the problems being reported. Then they use the administration of NCSU (all the way up to the Provost) to destroy anyone who tries to report a department head for wrongdoing. This is what I have seen through direct experience.

 

If you go back to the beginning of this email, it is obvious that I love NC State: the institution, the students, and the people here. This love has grown over the course of 46 years. Therefore, to experience this level of dishonesty and betrayal from the administration of NCSU is unbearable. There is an email I sent to Steve Markham that goes like this:

 

-------- Begin excerpt ------

Your replies at 1:30AM are greatly appreciated. However, you avoided an explanation of the retaliation I have received, the strict prohibition on retaliation promised by the university, EthicsPoint, the wrongdoing at the core of my reporting to EthicsPoint, and the fraud that has been committed by promising protection and then vanishing it. These items are the elephant in the room.

 

You said:

 

> Notwithstanding your initial points, everyone else that has seen your emails thought you appear to be the offending person.  You and I disagree on these points.  You will likely disagree with Dan [O’Brien] on these points - he has seen your emails and recommends this action. 

 

It's not that I am leveling accusations. These are material facts. The strict prohibition on retaliation is a material fact.

 

I have a way to resolve the "disagreement" you refer to. I am saying this creatively, not adversarially. We could resolve the disagreement in an hour. Let's assemble the members of I&E - Haley, Amed, Eren, Josh, Abby, Alisha, Ken, Jenn, Lisa, Erica, Spencer and all the rest. Let's show them Dr. Ekkad's email, and then my response. Let's explain the landscape to them, because it is a bit complex with perhaps 20 different actors being involved. You have 10 minutes to explain your logic for destroying my career. I have 10 minutes to explain my logic for why Dr. Ekkad is guilty of wrongdoing, that my response is valid, and the retaliation I have received is criminal. And then let's ask the members of I&E if I am out of line with my September 9 email.

 

I hypothesize (and really I know for certain) that the members of I&E will side with me. The problem for you, Ekkad, the Dean, the Provost, Dan [O’Brien], etc. together as a group is that you are all trapped in a mutual aid alliance that is corrupt. You are all scratching each other's backs and overlooking wrongdoing in the process. You all are EXACTLY the reason why the EthicsPoint system exists. How you neutered EthicsPoint and all its promises against retaliation is a mystery. This is the elephant again.

 

Maybe I am shouting into the void, and it is hopeless, but I am asking you to see what's happened. The simple fact is that, given a chance to render a verdict on the situation here (Ekkad's email, my response, EthicsPoint protections, and all the retaliation I have received), the members of I&E would side with me after we both present our cases.

-------- End excerpt ------

 

I later met with Dan O’Brien, and he denied that he was involved in any of the decision making.

 

If Dr. Markham had taken me up on my offer, he would have clearly seen how wrong he is. He cannot destroy someone’s career for reporting legitimate concerns.

 

It’s criminal what is happening here, but the entire administration is aligned on the crime and is therefore impenetrable. How can the person who reports concerns be the “offending person”, rather than the department heads who are committing the wrongdoing that is being reported? Why are these department heads, who are supposed to be professional executives, allowed to throw their tantrums at all? It is unbearable to see this hypocrisy and doublespeak in action at the highest levels of the NC State administration. They also forget the order of events. The department heads committed the wrongdoing, and THEN I reported it. They are the cause of my reporting. I am not doing anything wrong. In fact, I am doing exactly what the university told me to do.

 

There’s another aspect here. I was never “charged” with any crime by the university. There was no hearing. I was never allowed to present my side. No appeal is possible. EthicsPoint did nothing about any of the wrongdoing I reported or the retaliation. Everything about EthicsPoint is fraudulent. I have been told I must be silent. Thus, my career can be completely destroyed with no process or protection whatsoever. And it can be destroyed in defiance to everything NCSU promised about a strict prohibition on retaliation. The department heads are untouchable – they can do all the wrongdoing they want without any mechanism to stop them. Then the university demands my silence, or it will destroy me further. It’s all unbelievable.

 

My career has been destroyed by multiple administrators at NCSU who united together and completely ignored the EthicsPoint System and its promises to employees. I did what the university told me to do, and then these administrators ruined my life for it.

 

These are my closing thoughts after going through this degrading, humiliating, unjust, depressing, process:

·         To the Provost and everyone else who helped destroy my career: You created the EthicsPoint system and made specific public statements and promises about it. Then, it turns out the system is completely fraudulent. What you did is disgusting. When you promise “no retaliation”, you should prosecute retaliation, not become an active participant in it.

·         To the Dean: You cannot go out in public talking about your deep concern for mental health, and then run a department that does not care about mental health. You cannot have rogue department heads out lying to employees, dealing with them in bad faith, defaming them, and so on. When I report my concerns, you should not tell me to jump in a lake. You should prosecute the wrongdoing.

·         To the department heads: When you treat someone unjustly, unethically, hypocritically, in bad faith… when you steal things of extreme value from them… when you behave like entitled assholes… you should expect to be written up. When the writeup arrives, you should not behave like fragile little children full of retaliation. You should instead listen, respond rationally, and fix the problems.

·         To Dr, Markham: You should have supported me, not retaliated against me. Really, everyone who received Dr. Ekkad’s email should have supported me.

 

Thank you for listening to my story. I feel like people need to understand what really happened, rather than me remaining silent and the university covering the whole thing up. And please know that I am deeply grateful to everyone who has been my friend, and shown me kindness, during my many years at NC State. There are so many good people at NC State.

 

Sincerely,

Marshall Brain

 

 

PS - Let me tell you three other stories in this genre from my years at NCSU.

 

 

The first one comes from the period of time around George Floyd’s murder, circa June 2020. Remember how much national anger and emotion surrounded that event? Many leaders spoke out about the racism that George Floyd’s murder represented. At NC State, leaders spoke powerfully about ending racism on campus and well beyond. For example, Chancellor Woodson put it this way in his letter entitled “Grief, Anger and Needed Change”:

“As members of this intellectual community, I strongly encourage all of us to fight for positive change powerfully, thoughtfully and peacefully… It is on each and all of us to fight injustice and advance a truly diverse, inclusive and supportive environment for all on our campus and well beyond. That’s what it means to be part of this Wolfpack.” (https://leadership.ncsu.edu/2020/05/31/grief-anger-and-needed-change ) (NCSU deleted that page to erase history, but a copy of it is visible here: https://www.si.com/college/ncstate/sports/ncstate-chancellor-woodson-floyd-protest-statement )

Chancellor Woodson wants us to go well beyond campus to fight injustice if we want to be part of this Wolfpack.

 

Sheri Schwab, who was the Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Diversity at NCSU, put it this way in her public statement:

“Let us all stand together as we work to build a just and inclusive NC State community, one that does not tolerate unjust or inhumane treatment, and that denounces it, clearly and loudly, when we witness it anywhere in the world.” (https://diversity.ncsu.edu/news/2020/05/30/statement-regarding-the-events-in-minneapolis/) (also deleted but archived here https://intranet.ces.ncsu.edu/2020/06/nc-state-statements-in-response-to-the-death-of-george-floyd/)

She wants us to denounce racism anywhere in the world.

 

Louis Martin-Vega, then the Dean of the NCSU College of Engineering, put it this way in his personal statement emailed to everyone in the college:

“What I also hope is that this particular incident may have been the “tipping point” that has allowed a significant critical mass in our country, regardless of color, to see that the blatant injustice and systemic racism that is imbedded in the fabric of our country needs to be cleansed once and for all.”

He wants our country to be cleansed of racism once and for all.

 

And Dan Stancil, ECE department head at the time, put it this way in his email to the entire department:

“I hope that beyond teaching electrical and computer engineering, we as a department and university community can have a positive impact to reduce racism and prejudice in all its forms.”

He wants us to reduce racism and prejudice in all its forms.

What could be clearer? Based on these statements, we – the NC State community – should be leading the charge to end racism in the United States. We have been specifically told to do so. NCSU absolutely should be the anti-racism leader and the beacon in this effort. Why are all these statements so clear and powerful? Because racism is evil. Every thoughtful, rational, moral person of conscience knows that racism is evil. Racism makes life miserable, dangerous and unfair for millions of innocent people.

 

Therefore, I started thinking about how to end racism nationwide. I thought deeply about the racism problem. After Dan Stancil wrote to the Electrical Engineering department with his call to arms, I wrote back to the department with four emails containing a variety of ideas that we could implement (the first of these emails is attached, along with an endorsement from Dean Louis Martin-Vega). Next, I was asked to meet with an anti-racism task force on campus.

 

And then… something unimaginable happened. It turned out that this was just a passing fad. All these powerful statements against racism from campus leaders came to mean nothing. This anti-racism fever at NCSU peaked and passed, everyone got cold feet, and suddenly no one at NC State cared about racism anymore. I was told to shut up about racism by the administration or be fired.

 

We – NC State – stood on the brink of doing something significant, something important, to combat racism. NC State could have been a key part of the solution to racism across the United States. But nothing ever happened. What the leaders said was meaningless.

 

2)

 

I had that same feeling again in 2023. I was asked to speak at TEDxNCState: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ua6IUZKN58 and https://wraltechwire.com/2023/11/17/a-perfectly-green-campus-how-nc-state-can-battle-climate-change/  . I was so happy with the way this talk turned out, and with its message - with the idea that NC State could be a beacon to the world about climate change solutions. We could show real leadership on our campus and then in our region. We could accelerate climate change solutions. The approach discussed in this talk seems so simple and obvious, and it would even save the university money over time. But then it turned out that the administration didn’t care. This idea got zero traction.

 

3)

 

The same thing happened with EcoPRT (https://www.technicianonline.com/news/professors-propose-futuristic-rail-system/article_32de2c3a-3c8e-11e4-a175-001a4bcf6878.html) . Seth Hollar and I had come up with the idea for an advanced campus transportation system that would make NCSU a worldwide leader in personal rapid transit. We advanced the idea to the point where there were actual vehicles, along with simulations, concept art, and lots of planning.

 

Next, we needed a segment of test track to test the elevated aspect of the system. We had found the perfect site for a test track that we could build with a modest budget between the top floors of the Oval West parking deck and the Alliance parking deck. This site was perfect for a demonstration.

 

We went through all the steps to apply to the official NCSU process and they approved this project. Construction could begin and the public could start to see an amazing way to connect main campus and Centennial campus together. But shortly thereafter, the real estate office of Centennial campus stepped in and they destroyed the project. It did not matter that the university had approved it – the “real estate people” apparently had unilateral power, and they destroyed this test site, and really any forward motion for EcoPRT, as you can see in the attachment.

 

Looking at the EcoPRT incident now, in light of projects like “The Corner” and “Reds and Whites”, where these projects received approval while the transportation research project was derailed… It seems impossible. Just like NCSU’s failure to fight racism when the opportunity was in our grasp with a broad mandate from leadership to do it. It is depressing to think about that gigantic lost opportunity to make the lives of millions of people better. Just like NCSU’s failure to implement real climate change solutions that could make NCSU a completely green beacon of hope. These, to me, are huge losses for the university.

 

I can think of many other examples (e.g. the $1,500 engineering activity fee, which is certainly a scam) but these three are sufficient to get my point across. The point being: I love this university, but at times its actions are idiotic, and at times completely corrupt.

 

--

 

From a happier time in my life: https://wraltechwire.com/2023/05/12/marshall-brains-doomsday-what-would-space-aliens-do-with-planet-earth/

 

 

--Marshall BrainDirector of the Engineering Entrepreneurs ProgramNC State ECE Departmentece.ncsu.eduNC State Innovation and Entrepreneurshipentrepreneurship.ncsu.eduNC State UniversityCampus Box 8624NC State Entrepreneurship GaragePartners 1, Suite 16501017 Main Campus DriveRaleigh NC, 27695